Ghost: Episode 16

by kaedejun

I honestly think that this was a killer episode – an awesome way to raise the stakes after episode 15’s ending. Hyun Min’s got nowhere to turn, so he’s lashing out against Woo-Young in any way he can to buy time and finish his revenge. And, he’s a lot closer to finishing it than I thought.

Run, run, run! The IP address Tae Gyun traced leads them to unit 506, so Hyuk Joo orders him and Kang Mi to take the elevator up to the room. Woo-Young will take the stairs, and Sang Woo will call for back-up. Meanwhile, with the other computers running wiping programs, Eung Jin orders everyone to split up, but keep their communication lines open in case he needs to contact them. They run off before the wiping programs even finish; tsk tsk, Hyun Min won’t be happy to hear that!

On the fifth floor, Kang Mi spots one of the hackers with glasses and chases after him. As for Woo-Young, he bumps into one of the young hackers trying to escape through the stairs. Hyuk Joo bumps into – of all people – Kang Eung Jin. Oh ho… that’s an awkward meet: “Hi boss, sorry I betrayed you. Gotta run, bye!”

Tae Gyun enters unit 506 and sees most of the computers 98% completely wiped out. He unplugs all of the computers, stopping the program in its tracks for now. Hyuk Joo calls up Sang Woo on the first floor and notifies him that Eung Jin may be coming his way. As he exits the stairwell, he slams right into Sang Woo, running towards him, giving Eung Jin an extra few seconds head start. Unfortunately, Hyuk Joo and Sang Woo lose track of Eung Jin in the parking lot.

At least Kang Mi successfully traps her Glasses-Hacker when he has nowhere else to run, and she draws a gun on him. As for Woo-Young’s hacker, he thinks he’s successfully evaded Woo-Young, but once he turns the corner he gets caught. Woo-Young: “You’re under arrest for hacking into other people’s personal information. I don’t know your language but I know you can understand me.” HEE. It tickles my bones that a hacker just said that to another hacker.

The two boys are hauled off to prison, and the broken computer outside the building is collected for evidence. Tae Gyun doesn’t have high hopes he’ll be able to recover the rest of the computers upstairs. Once again, the witnesses are the only source of “reliable evidence,” even though they’re not going to be solid enough for any proof.

Back at the bureau, Hyuk Joo shows Director Jun Safe Tech’s beta vaccine program that was actually a hacking program in disguise. Because it’s an old program though, and a beta version at that, Safe Tech could easily say that it was a glitch. The police will have to rely on the hackers confessing. Director Jun orders for an arrest warrant to be made for Kang Eung Jin as well. Thankfully, the bureau’s directors haven’t decided on whether they’ll use Safe Tech’s vaccine for their computers just yet.

Hyuk Joo adds that he could not find anything suspicious about Kim Woo Hyun in relation to the Nam Sang Won murder case. Though Director Jun accepts the conclusion, he wasn’t the only one who was suspicious of Woo Hyun in regards to that case, and will have to let “this other person” know. Hmm – I wonder who’s this higher authority he’s reporting to?

Hyuk Joo has another question: on the night that Eung Jin escaped, Hyuk Joo had wanted to report to Director Jun, but couldn’t find him. Director Jun doesn’t look at Hyuk Joo directly when he replies that he wasn’t feeling well, and left for home early. Hmmm… It leaves Hyuk Joo still unsure on whether he should trust the director or not.

He goes out for a meal with Woo-Young and Kang Mi, who are not surprised that Hyuk Joo has decided to trust Director Jun. Hyuk Joo trusts too easily! But even if the director is suspicious, they don’t have much of a choice at the moment. Hyuk Joo calls over for a bottle of soju, and pours out a shot for Woo-Young and Kang Mi. “Thank you, for getting me out of jail.” Aw; clearly gratefulness is a test of pride for these two men who technically should hate each other to the core. They toast, and drink. Hyuk Joo cheers up considerably – Woo Hyun was always so stiff and never would have drunk with him.

Suddenly a voice calls out: “You traitors!” It’s Sang Woo and Tae Gyun, who feel utterly betrayed at being stuck in the office, ordered to write reports, when the Three Musketeers are out eating together. Sang Woo even tries to squeeze himself between Woo-Young and Kang Mi, but gives up when he realizes there’s no room for him.

Four bottles in, and Hyuk Joo is singing “Twinkle” again. Oh boy… A tipsy Sang Woo comments on how heartbroken he is over Kang Mi’s tired complexion. Woo-Young wants them to stop drinking, but Hyuk Joo refuses to. Sang Woo and Tae Gyun even profess their love for him; since they don’t know he’s actually Ki Young yet, they still call him “Woo Hyun.”

Several more drinks later, and Woo-Young is forced to carry Hyuk Joo by piggy-back to his home, grimacing from the weight all the way through. Hyuk Joo starts screaming, “Park Ki Young!! Park Ki Young – let’s catch the criminal for sure! Park Ki Young!!!” Imagine if everyone else heard that? What a catastrophe! But Woo-Young begrudgingly admits he likes this crazy Mad Cow.

The next day is interrogation day. Glasses-Hacker is Kwon Do Hyun, a Korean born in China, and the other hacker is Jo Myung Joon, also born in Hong Kong. They have clean backgrounds, and no evidence of being hackers, so the only way they can get anything out of them is through a confession. Hyuk Joo takes on Jo Myung Joon, who keeps saying he doesn’t know anything in Cantonese. Hyuk Joo calls him out on knowing Korean though, since he saw him order from a Korean menu. He tells him that Do Hyun already confessed, to which Myung Joon replies, “Did he really talk?” in Korean. Heh.

Hyuk Joo wants to know two things: who told them to hack, and where is Kang Eung Jin?

Meanwhile, Director Moon informs Hyun Min of Do Hyun and Myung Joon’s arrests. Though the police won’t be able to get anything out of the two boys, Hyun Min refuses to let down his guard. His revenge is not over yet against Kim Suk Joon, Nam Sang Won, Jo Kyung Shin, Kang Yoon Woo, and Im Chi Hyun. Hyun Min too had once wondered about the power of a mouse click. Growing up, he didn’t know what computers could do. Now, the world can’t live without them, and it’s so easy to manipulate when everything is literally just made of up 1’s and 0’s. If Hyun Min ever wanted to get rid of something – or somebody – just one click, one manipulation of the binary code, and the person is gone forever.

Woo-Young takes on Do Hyun, who adamantly insists he knows nothing. All they did was follow orders. He recognizes a picture of Eung Jin, saying that he just saw him around but never knew his name. He only got involved because his professor, Dam Sa Myung, had asked if he wanted to know the power of a click with a computer, and he thus learned more about the world of hacking.

Woo-Young shows Do Hyun pictures of every man involved in the Jo Kyung Moon case 13 years ago. Do Hyun recognizes them all, because he had hacked into each person’s computer files. However, he claims to not know what his bosses were planning to do with all that information.

Not much is gained from their confessions except for one lead: Kang Yoon Woo. He was Jo Kyung Moon’s driver 13 years ago, and implicated him during the trial for the illegal slush fund. Everyone’s connected to Hyun Min in some way, and clearly he’s planning for something bigger with the vaccine program.

Kang Mi arrives at work to find a bouquet of roses and a bag of skin care products on her desk. When Woo-Young and Hyuk Joo enter the office, she asks who gave them to her. You can’t tell!?

Sang Woo comes bouncing in happily with cups of coffee for everyone. He smiles at her especially and says, “Please become more beautiful!” Kang Mi blushes, Woo-Young looks away, and Hyuk Joo demands where his skin care set is. Woo-Young declines the cup of coffee and heads out, which prompts Kang Mi to chase after him because he never says where he’s going. He even tells her not to come out with him, or else her “pretty face will be all tanned!” Sang Woo is totally jealous, wondering why they get to always go together, while his partner is… well, it’s just Hyuk Joo.

Woo-Young isn’t just escaping the puppy love scene before his eyes – he really does have a purpose. He heads out to visit Kang Yoon Woo’s home for more information, only to find out that he already passed away a few days ago. He was a bit of a hermit, having no family and never going out. They look through his computer and find that he was last looking at his stocks before he died. His stocks had plummeted, and driven to despair, Yoon Woo committed suicide by hanging himself from his lights.

Since his computer also had the Safe Tech vaccine program, it is likely that Hyun Min and his men had found out what stocks he was looking at, and then manipulated it as such to prompt him to buy it. Because of his debts, Yoon Woo would have bought them all, and once suckered in, the stocks would fall and he’d lose all his money. However there is no evidence that Hyun Min planned all this.

They’ll need to find a way to warn and protect the last two surviving people related to the case: Prosecutor Im and Kim Suk Joon.

Meanwhile, Hyun Min deletes a file on Yoon Woo that has information on his stock holdings and his large debt. With a click, Kang Yoon Woo is gone from his records. He then sends out an email to all of his minions: “Move on to the next stage.” Eung Jin receives the message while at a PC cafe, and smiles with evil excitement. Another recipient at the police bureau receives the email as well… but we only see the hand.

Sang Woo enters Hyuk Joo’s office to hand him the papers regarding Eung Jin’s arrest warrant, and then does a weird shirt-tug signal. At the door, Seung Yoon peeks in with a plate of white tofu and a cow drawn on top of it. Hyuk Joo isn’t too happy to see her – after all she handed off the recordings to a reporter, which caused even more trouble for him! Plus – do she and Sang Woo think that Hyuk Joo really likes tofu!?

Seung Yoon knows that any explanation she gives would be far too long, and so she just apologizes sincerely instead. She won’t be seeing him much anymore, as she has bigger stories to fish, and hopes that he’ll eat all of the tofu. As soon as she’s out the door, Hyuk Joo bites into it. What? He’s just hungry!

Before she leaves the cyber crime team’s office, she passes by Woo-Young’s room. He’s not in, so she checks out his desk. Everything is reminiscent of Ki Young – the way he marks his calendar, and the way he bookmarks his books. She thinks back to all of her encounters with Woo-Young and can’t shake off that familiarity he seems to have with her. He knew her name when she snuck into a victim’s home, back when she didn’t even know who he was. He even told her to keep up with “True Story” and to practice writing novels; that way a good article would come out of it. I have a funny feeling she’s going to figure out Woo-Young’s true identity soon…

Hyuk Joo bumps into one of the investigators in the bureau and requests that he put Eung Jin on the wanted list as quickly as possible. The investigator acquiesces, but finds it shocking that Eung Jin of all people is an enemy now. He mentions that Director Jun himself was the one who gave Eung Jin the position as a forensic scientist. That piece of news makes Hyuk Joo much more wary of Director Jun.

Prosecutor Im sits in his darkened office uneasily. His supervisor had asked him earlier if something had happened to Prosecutor Im that might be worth investigating. I think he is getting an inkling that Im might have been threatened. After much thought, he gives his supervisor a call, intending to tell him the truth about the bugging of the Prosecutor’s office. Um – is that safe? What if your office is bugged by Hyun Min?! But he heads out to meet with his supervisor to explain more in detail.

As he goes out, he doesn’t notice a crazed, hooded man muttering about someone following him around and killing him repeatedly. When he spies Prosecutor Im leaving the office, he approaches him and asks, “PK?” Prosecutor Im has no idea what the guy is talking about, but next thing you know, he gets stabbed in the abdomen. “How dare you kill me!” the crazed man cries out, and then he runs for it.

Word reaches the team that Prosecutor Im is in critical condition at the hospital. They’ve already arrested the attacker – Jung Dong Yoon, a gamer who’s addicted to a multiplayer role-playing game online. What’s weird is the motive: when Sang Woo questioned him, Dong Yoon kept mentioning that “he” (meaning Prosecutor Im) kept killing him and was PK. Tae Gyun explains that PK means ‘player kill’ – when you kill a player and then take away all their items. Dong Yoon got into a huge fight with this person online, and they resolved to meet offline. But, the PK that kept killing him and taking away his items was none other than a user registered under Prosecutor Im’s name. Someone took his identity and began a fight with Dong Yoon online.

The Three Musketeers confer privately, and Woo-Young adamantly believes that someone took Prosecutor Im’s identity and located the gamer through the vaccine program’s invasive powers. They then baited Dong Yoon to the point that he would become murderous. This was a complex plan that Hyun Min had concocted just to get rid of Prosecutor Im. But once  Prosecutor Im’s gone, the last person left is Kim Suk Joon.

Worried, Woo-Young calls home and gets his son on the line. Seon Woo is near tears on the phone – something happened to grandpa!

The Three Musketeers run off to Woo-Young’s father’s home, where Hyuk Joo is surprised to see that Seon Woo even exists. They go into Kim Suk Joon’s room, where the doctor is already treating him. Being paranoid and suspicious though, Woo-Young believes that the doctor is slowly killing Suk Joon per Hyun Min’s orders. The doctor quickly explains that he gave Suk Joon some medicine to treat the aspiration pneumonia. Some food had gotten stuck in Suk Joon’s breathing tubes, which is apparently a common occurrence for coma patients.

Later in the living room, Hyuk Joo can’t get over the fact that Woo Hyun had a son and a sickly father. However Woo-Young has now adopted this family as his own. He tells the housemaid to call him immediately if something like this happens again, and requests that she keep a closer eye on Seon Woo when she drops him off at kindergarten. This is his way of trying to protect the family, knowing that Hyun Min could attack them easily through the vaccine program.

On top of that, they’ll have to release Do Hyun and Myung Joon since they don’t have much evidence against them to keep them any longer. So Woo-Young resolves that they’ll get something once those boys are released. His plan? To tail the two boys and find out where they go and what they do. It’s likely to give them more clues on who they’re going up against.

The next day, the two hackers are released from jail. Woo-Young chooses to follow Do Hyun, while Kang Mi and Hyuk Joo follow Myung Joon. Do Hyun quickly figures out that someone is following him and ducks into a PC cafe. He gets on the computer and accesses his email account, but is suddenly attacked from behind – it’s Woo-Young! But the email address on the screen attracts his attention first: phantom0308!?

Outside of the cafe, Woo-Young pins Do Hyun against the wall and demands the truth. Was Do Hyun the one who requested for the Phantom video file from Shin Hyo Jung’s computer? (Basically – was he the one who hired Ki Young for the hacking task?) Do Hyun has no idea what he’s talking about; ‘phantom0308’ is just the email address that he and his team use to send messages to each other. Though the account has been closed for a year, Do Hyun only started using it recently again. The inbox is empty though because the emails automatically delete if one does not read them at the designated hours of 9AM and 9PM.

Woo-Young accepts this explanation and quickly runs off. Watching him leave, Do Hyun laughs in surprise. He calls up Director Moon; their trap worked! He used the email address that only Hades would have recognized, but Woo-Young knew what it is. Aha! This is practically confirmation for Director Moon and Hyun Min that Woo-Young is really Ki Young!

As for Kang Mi and Hyuk Joo, they track Myung Joon all the way to a fitness center. To their utter surprise, they see Myung Joon talking to Director Jun! So he really is with the bad guys! He can’t be trusted! They don’t even bother following Myung Joon out when he leaves, too preoccupied with the thought that Director Jun is a baddie.

It’s too bad they didn’t, because if they did, they would have seen that Myung Joon met with his real contact in the parking lot – Chief Shin! (Who’s really surprised at this point though?)

A flashback reveals what Chief Shin had really done. He was the one who brought Eung Jin into the bureau, and recommended him as a forensic scientist to Director Jun. Seeing no problem with that, Director Jun hired him as so. And then we discover that when Myung Joon approached Director Jun at the fitness club, he only asked him about the trainers in the club and if they were any good. Director Jun is actually really innocent!

But it’s too late – Myung Joon’s actions have already planted seeds of doubt and distrust between the cyber team and their direct supervisor.

Chief Shin tells Myung Joon to then relay the message that the police bureau will be using Safe Tech’s vaccine program starting tomorrow. All these news updates please Hyun Min greatly.

The next morning, Tae Gyun logs in to his computer and notices the little pop up message from Safe Tech telling him that he’s successfully logged in. He freaks out, and quickly warns Kang Mi and Woo-Young, both of whom just arrived at work. Woo-Young quickly checks his computer; it’s been installed with Safe Tech’s vaccine program too. He immediately orders all the computers in their office to be unplugged, and that no one is to access the police bureau servers.

Director Jun actually goes off to Chief Shin and complains that he shouldn’t just change out the vaccine program without warning. Without even suspecting Chief Shin, he informs him that the Safe Tech vaccine might actually be bad. He hands over evidence of a copy of CK Company’s hard drive, where the beta version of Safe Tech’s vaccine had a hacking program in it. Chief Shin’s eyes widen – how did the cyber crime team get their hands on this!? He asks where the original is.

Well – the original is with none other than Woo-Young. He takes the original hard drive and heads straight for his old “True Story” office to investigate the vaccine program further on his computers. As he checks the code, he hears footsteps outside the door. An unexpected guest!

The door opens… and it’s Hyun Min!

Woo-Young greets Hyun Min cordially and they ask each other why they’re here. Woo-Young’s excuse: “My best friend used to live here.” Hyun Min’s excuse: “I knew the person who lived here very well. I wanted him to be on my side but I couldn’t appeal to him with promises of power, money, or ambition.” Woo-Young smiles, since he knows he totally rejected Hyun Min.

Hyun Min asks if Park Ki Young is Woo-Young’s friend. “Park Ki Young was killed in a factory explosion a year ago. You got hurt badly too, and you lost your memory. Therefore I’m sure you won’t remember this either: that day, Lieutenant Kim Woo Hyun went there to kill Park Ki Young. Since you don’t remember, I’ll remind you. You told me you would kill Park Ki Young that night.”

Woo-Young flashes back to that night, and he remembers that Woo Hyun had trained a gun on him. It was likely that he would kill Ki Young and steal back the evidence had the explosion not happened. He remembers that Woo Hyun’s last words were that he wanted to “make things right” again, but Woo-Young never got more clarification past that.

Hyun Min asks Woo-Young if Park Ki Young truly died that night, because the strange thing is that only Hades should have known the email address ‘phantom0308’; how did Woo-Young recognize it then?

Hyun Min: I think it’s because you’re Hades, Park Ki Young.

Woo-Young: That’s right. I’m Park Ki Young. But ‘phantom0308’ is the ID known just between me and one other person. That person is Shin Hyo Jung’s true killer. So you are the one who killed Shin Hyo Jung.

SHOWDOWN!!

Comments:

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Face off time! Can these two men just battle it out honestly and see who comes out on top?

I enjoyed watching Hyun Min set up the traps for the Three Musketeers; the simplest of misdirections can work wonders for him. But I enjoyed watching Hyun Min looking quite perturbed at the fact that he’s been identified as the true killer of Shin Hyo Jung even more. Though he got to identify Woo-Young as Ki Young, he now has to face the fact that he’s actually been going up against his enemy with the face of his ally. I kind of want them to just shake hands, and agree to a gentlemanly race to the end: whoever finds the evidence first wins. No tricks or destroying evidence allowed.

This is around the time in the series that I would have expected more people to find out Woo-Young’s true identity. It’s a good thing that Seung Yoon will figure it out in a matter of time, though I wonder how much help she’s going to be if she finds out. While I don’t think she’d out Ki Young, I do wonder how she can help the case more. Perhaps a battle of articles against Yeon Joo if Yeon Joo begins a smear campaign against Woo-Young/Ki Young?

I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed with the way that Prosecutor Im was dealt with. I mean, really – getting a game addict to kill Prosecutor Im? Though Prosecutor Im’s information was used to register for the game, would anyone seriously believe that the prosecutor was a gamer who liked to PK Dong Yoon? The motive surrounding Prosecutor Im’s stabbing is so iffy that even a casual person would wonder if it’s a case of identity theft. I was hoping for a better showdown between Hyun Min and Prosecutor Im, considering that Im had failed him personally with the case of the USB bug. I can understand if he didn’t directly confront Kang Yoon Woo, since Yoon Woo was just his father’s driver, and he probably didn’t have any direct dealings with Hyun Min after the case 13 years ago. But Hyun Min dealt with Nam Sang Won, Kyung Shin, and Im Chi Hyun personally during the past 13 years, and he practically killed Nam Sang Won and Jo Kyung Shin personally. Couldn’t he have done the same for Prosecutor Im?

And finally – I hope we can get greater clarification on Woo Hyun’s intentions soon.  With Ki Young’s memory of Woo Hyun wanting to “make things right” again, I wonder what he meant by them. Did Woo Hyun want to make things right for Hyun Min? Or did he want to make things right by catching Hyun Min while pretending to be on his side? There’s so many possibilities than we thought before because as the case evolved, Woo Hyun has been portrayed as a bad guy, then a good guy. The only person who could really explain Woo Hyun’s thoughts is currently buried six feet in the ground; maybe someone can find a secret file where Woo Hyun kept a video diary on what he planned to do with Hyun Min. That’d be helpful.

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